[zachrose]

I've had phones that were apologetically plastic. They had a metallic finish that wore off to reveal the bone-colored ABS underneath.

"Unapologetic" here corresponds to the notion that materials shouldn't imitate other materials, a practice that gained steam during the industrial revolution and irked the Modernists something awful.

[arrrg]

Exactly. There are so many phones out there that are apologetically plastic, I think it’s a very good idea to point out that one does not share that approach if that is the case.

I like Apple’s honest use of materials and I like that they increased it over the years. Silver keys on the MacBook Pro, made to look like the aluminum shell (but actually plastic)? Gone and replaced by black keycaps which are unmistakably plastic.

(That is not to say that Apple uniquely has this approach. I also like Nokia’s unapologetically plastic phones very much.)

Those words are not completely meaningless. Apple could have made a plastic phone that tries to look like the iPhone 5. That is apologetically plastic. And it would have been awful. There is a difference.